The threat of damage from water to a structure whether it be a commercial building, multi-family residence or private home is one that has and continues to be a significant concern to owners and occupiers of such structures. While it is virtually impossible to protect against flooding due to natural occurrences such as hurricanes, torrential rains that cause stream flooding etc., many systems have been developed and marketed for the protection of structures against water damage due to, for example, freezing or breaking pipes, leaking appliances and the like.
Such prior art systems generally comprise: multiple battery powered or hard wired with battery back-up RF communicating moisture or water sensors; hard wired, battery powered or hard wired and battery backed-up water shut off control valves; a hard wired, battery powered or hard wired and battery backed-up central console capable of receiving information from the multiple sensors and transmitting instructions to a central water shut-off valve and passing information to one or more remote monitoring systems.
Representative of such prior art systems are those described in the following U.S. patents and patent Publications: U.S. Pat. No. 6,123,093; U.S. Pat. No. 5,038,820; US2005/0275547; U.S. Pat. No. 6,025,788; and US 2002/00332759 as well as many commonly available publications and safety websites such as that produced and distributed by State Farm Insurance relating to Water Detection Systems at its website.
While these prior art systems have proven highly satisfactory in many applications, a common weakness shared by all of them is the inability of the property owner or occupier to monitor, control, activate/deactivate, modify, and overall operate and customize the operation and configuration of each of the individual elements of the system individually to meet specific, generally temporary, requirements such as deactivating a specific sensor because of maintenance being performed on a specific appliance or deactivation of the central water control valve operating mechanism during similar operations.
Additionally, such prior art systems often utilized RF communication systems that could interfere with other neighboring systems such as might be found in an apartment or condominium setting, or had to rely on hard wiring of the valve control hardware or the use of very powerful high amperage battery systems because of the inability of conventional battery power to deliver the peak power required to activate a water control valve driver.
There thus remains a need for a water/moisture detection system and control system that, while performing the sensing and control functions of prior art devices, allows for complete operator control and monitoring of the entire system from one or more control elements, provides RF communication between the various elements of the system without the potential for interference with neighboring systems and permits the use of relatively small yet powerful power sources for meeting the relatively high peak power demands required for the activation of water control valves.